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REVIEW:
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A FRENCH
FILM FEST? OUI!
ORLEANS AND HIS
JET LIFE RECORDINGS
ALONG FOR THE RIDE.
B Y A L E X W O OD WA RD
Gambit > bestofneworleans.com > auGust 7 > 2012
RAPPER CURREN$Y
IS TAKING OFF — AND BRINGING NEW
17
“IF I WRITE A SONG TODAY, IT’S GONNA BE
ABOUT WHAT I DID YESTERDAY. THAT’S ALL I
Gambit > bestofneworleans.com > auGust 7 > 2012
C
18
urren$y doesn’t appear tired or stoned. He
talks like he’s doing it on command while
in and out of a weed nap. But the New
Orleans MC has likely been awake and working
longer than anyone in the room. He’s been in town
just a few days after a weeklong promotional circus
in New York.
“I was tied up,” he says. “But it’s cool. We got a
studio down here, so I’ll make up for it.”
Right — because Curren$y can’t go anywhere
for any amount of time without recording something, or someone, and adding it to a prolific
catalog that would make mid-2000s era Lil Wayne
do a spit take.
Curren$y released The Stoned Immaculate
(Warner Bros.), his official major label debut, on
June 5 to critical acclaim. It debuted at No. 8 on
the Billboard 200. He was quick to drop another.
Just a month later, he released Cigarette Boats,
a five-track EP, as a free download. In 2011, he
released two full-length albums. He’s on par so far
in 2012, and there’s more to come.
In his brief career, Curren$y has released
five full-length albums and more than a dozen
mixtapes (though some are more like albums,
with solid production rather than recycled beats).
Then there are EPs, collaborations, singles, and
guest spots on tracks with members of his Jet Life
Recordings roster (The JETS) and simpatico MCs
down with the namesake acronym (“Just Enjoy
This Shit”).
In the back office of New Orleans Street Customs
Motors on Chef Menteur Highway, Curren$y
hops on a counter and props his clean pair of
Nike Air Jordans on a chair. Curren$y —wearing a
gold chain, orange snapback, camouflage cargo
shorts and a black Billionaire Boys Club crewneck — doesn’t need any work done on his fleet,
TALK ABOUT: WHATEVER I DID.”
at least not today. (He added some new rims on a
Ferrari a week ago.)
“This time is cool — 2012, the 2000s, the ’90s
and all that was awesome, but I kind of feel like
I was supposed to be an adult in the ’70s. Late
’70s,” he says. “I feel like I would’ve killed it, or
possibly have been killed, because I was way too
killing it.”
You can see what he means — the artwork on
his latest LP features bold disco fonts, and the
cars he admires are all of a certain vintage. His
beats are slow, but not syrupy, and he has a soft
spot for The Doors, particularly Jim Morrison.
“I always want to sound like how a Crown Royal
bag looks. There’s a time period and everything
with that. There’s sounds in the beats and shit
you’re gonna hear like that. It might be the drums
from ‘Superfly.’ It might be like, ‘That sounds like
the guitar from Hawaii Five-0.’ Anything that’s
gonna make me feel like that.”
On The Stoned Immaculate’s opening track
“What It Look Like,” a dreamy harp leads an
orchestra as if a door opened to his ’70sinspired kingpin mansion. Curren$y’s laid back,
near-monotone rhymes are punctuated by puffs,
and his all-white leather palace fills with smoke
— the orchestral strings start to bend, and by the
time the beat kicks in the up-tempo “Take You
There,” the album lifts off into near-G-funk space
symphony complete with throwback horns and
big choruses.
The album is peppered with “studio” quality
production, from mega-producer Pharrell’s ghost
gospel “Chasin’ Papers” to fellow kush connoisseur Wiz Khalifa, who jumps on “No Squares”
and “Jet Life.” The album begins as a decadent
party and ends a faded all-nighter, with Curren$y
delivering his mission statement on closing track
“Jet Life.” Big K.R.I.T. whispers the mantra (“Jet
Life to the next life”) over the chorus and a skittering interstellar beat with delayed guitars.
Curren$y’s dedicated low-key persona is a far
cry from his credentials-listing street rap from a
decade ago. On the 2005 track “Shovlin’ Snow”
with Cash Money honcho Birdman and Lil Wayne,
Curren$y raps, “How you gonna go ahead and
tell me about me. Curren$y been the G since way
back in the G. Back when PNC made ‘Pump the
Party,’ and Soulja Slim laced up his first pair of
Rees.” In his showboating verse, Curren$y namedrops both New Orleans rap legends PartnersN-Crime (PNC) and the late Soulja Slim, who was
killed in 2003.
Now, the rapper has perfected day-in-thelife wordplay, mostly involving women, cars,
shoes, video games, weed, his friends and their
stories. The same applies to those following the
JETS Code.
“The only thing we talked about is what happened yesterday. If I write a song today, it’s gonna
be about what I did yesterday. That’s all I talk
about: whatever I did,” he says. “People like that,
and people want to become successful just by
being themselves.”
Curren$y, born Shante Franklin, wrote his first rap,
a story about Dennis the Menace and Mr. Wilson,
in elementary school. (“I think I ultimately killed
him,” he says, laughing. “I was like in the f—ing
third grade.”)
He didn’t write again until his senior year of high
school, where he jotted down a rap with a friend
whom he was sure would go pro. Curren$y’s
older brother, rapper Mr. Marcelo, released the
acclaimed Brick Livin’ in 2000 on legendary New
Orleans label No Limit Records.
“I didn’t take (rapping) seriously,” he says. “I
was like, ‘I can’t do this. What do I naturally have?
PAGE 20
“PEOPLE ALWAYS ASK ME ABOUT OVERSATURATION, LIKE
IF I’M CONCERNED BECAUSE I PUT OUT TOO MUCH STUFF,
THAT PEOPLE GET TIRED OF IT. THAT COULD KILL YOU IF
WHAT YOU’RE DOING IS NOT REAL.”
Gambit > bestofneworleans.com > auGust 7 > 2012
PAGE 18
20
I can write songs, I can write raps.’ I always knew
people — Marcelo already had a thing going
with No Limit and shit. I just never said out loud
that I wanted to rap. Had I said that earlier then
I would’ve been cool. … I was in that the whole
time. I didn’t have to run around with demos or do
battles, try and win my position in the game. It was
just like, ‘You can rap?’ And it just so happened
it was decent. Even if it would’ve been terrible it
probably would’ve been all right. ‘Oh, it’s just f—
ing Curren$y.’”
He joined the lineup on Marcelo’s Tuff Guy
Entertainment, which collapsed when its business
partner Doe Doe was murdered in 2001. Longtime friend C-Murder, who would drive Curren$y
to school and take him shopping for Jordans on
weekends, picked him up for his TRU Records
label. That deal fell apart when C-Murder was
prosecuted for murder in 2002.
He then caught the attention of No Limit —
that’s Curren$y swinging arms in an uncharacteristic XL white T-shirt in the 504 Boyz video “Get
Back” from 2002.
As Lil Wayne prepped his Young Money Entertainment (later home to centerpiece stars Drake
and Nicki Minaj), Wayne tapped Curren$y to
join the roster. In 2006, Curren$y had a minor hit
with “Where Da Cash At,” which appeared on Lil
Wayne’s Dedication 2 mixtape, released amid that
rapper’s acclaimed streak of “mixtape” releases.
The single hit Billboard (though on the low end on
the R&B/Hip-Hop chart, at No. 73).
Curren$y grew restless, bouncing from label to
label with no album of his own in anyone’s plans.
He went independent in 2007, releasing mixtape
after mixtape, including 2009’s acclaimed This
Ain’t No Mixtape and Jet Files, and he cracked
into XXL’s coveted “freshmen” issue, the hip-hop
magazine’s annual kingmaking list. (Also on that
year’s freshman list: current rap radio staples
B.o.B. and Kid Cudi.)
In 2010, Curren$y inked a deal with former
Roc-A-Fella Records mogul Damon Dash
through his BluRoc Records, distributed by Def
Jam, which released Pilot Talk — making it his first
“studio” album, released to critical acclaim.
The album was produced nearly exclusively
by Curren$y regular Ski Beatz, who overdubbed
tracks with live instruments and a full psychedelic
soul band, fleshing out Curren$y’s hazy visions of
“fuzzy herb trees” and “money, bitches, Testarossas, viva, clink a few mimosas.”
It also gave proper introduction to his war chest
of signature catchphrases, namely “eah” (as in
“Yeah,” without the “Y”), and his love for things
with four wheels or wings (the album art features
three jets circling a green-lensed cartoon view of
a swirling New Orleans cityscape).
Curren$y showed off his recruiting skills —
not just a sampling of soon-to-be Jet Lifers, but
heavyweights like Snoop Dogg and Mos Def drop
verses on the album. Its follow-up Pilot Talk 2, also
released in 2010, is similarly heavy on the horns
and psychedelic guitars.
Last year, he inked a deal with Warner
Bros., which distributed his independent
album Weekend at Burnie’s, and backed and
released his first “official” major label debut,
The Stoned Immaculate.
“You can be mainstream, you can be under-
ground — as long as you don’t get caught up. It’s
attractive. It’s way cooler to not be in the mix,” he
says. “A slow burn is better. That pop — I say that
about a lot of shit. It pops — it pops! — that means
it’s not there, like a bubble, like, ‘Yeah, we about to
blow up, we about to pop,’ pop.
“All right, now there’s nothing to talk about.
There it went. I don’t want to do that. That’s not
what I want to do.”
Curren$y avoids fanfare and commercial blasts
before and after album releases. (He told Complex magazine earlier this year, “I don’t want f—
ing airplanes flying with banners because I
did something.”)
Instead he celebrates his whole catalog, past,
present and future — and the future is booked
solid. In the pipeline: a live album with Wiz Khalifa,
Live in Concert (out Aug. 9); follow-ups to Pilot
Talk and Covert Coup, another Jets crew album; a
project with Big K.R.I.T.; and whatever else creeps
onto his schedule. He’s also shooting videos for
every track on The Stoned Immaculate, having
already released four videos; a fifth, for “Armoire,”
is forthcoming. The five tracks on Cigarette Boats
will be a short, five-part film.
It’s guaranteed none of these tracks will play on
rap radio or on MTV. Curren$y is kind of planning
they don’t.
“People always ask me about oversaturation,
like if I’m concerned because I put out too much
stuff, that people get tired of it,” he says. “That
could kill you if what you’re doing is not real. What
happens is, people get on with the unreal, a gimmick situation. The system eats that shit up, as far
PAGE 23
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PAGE 20
Under his Jet Life Recordings
umbrella, he’s planning a weekly
event at House of Blues, where
he celebrated the release of The
Stoned Immaculate on July 4.
The “Jet Lounge” series kicks
off every Wednesday beginning
this month. The event is meant to
mimic some of the organized hiphop showcases in New York that
helped break Curren$y. He wants
to bring that level of exposure to
New Orleans artists.
“This is how it’s supposed to
be,” he says. “We will have shown
a group of people that think like us,
at home, in this city, that they’re going to be able to pull it off. Because
it looks weird — I left No Limit, I left
Cash Money. To lose everything,
then get it back. That means whatever you want to do you can probably pull it off because I just did the
crazy shit. If all you talking about is
doing this, go do it. Because I just,
like, did it the worst way. …
“I could be telling you, ‘You don’t
have to play this game. Don’t drink
the Kool-Aid. It don’t have to be
like that.’ But if I’m not proving that,
I’m standing against that and I’m
living just as well as the people who
are playing the bullshit game, then
I’m just an empty wagon. I got to
prove it.”
Current Jet Life artists include
Young Roddy, Trademark da
Skydiver, Street Wiz, Smoke DZA,
Mikey Rocks (of The Cool Kids),
Nesby Phips, Corner Boy P, and
the former No Limit star and velvet
baritone Fiend.
In 2011, Curren$y released Jet
World Order, a sampler of his Jet
Life roster and its stable of producers, namely New Orleans’ Monsta
Beatz, the duo (Dee-Low and Jean
Laphare) behind much of the
Curren$y catalog.
“I’m a pretty good judge of
character. I’m not in the company of
people I shouldn’t be,” he says.
“They have ideas, I have ideas,
and when you feel safe around a
like-minded person, you’re going to
do whatever you can do for them.
That’s what I’ve always been able
to flow off of, just the fact that I try to
be what I am.”
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Gambit > bestofneworleans.com > auGust 7 > 2012
as media, what they’re going to give
out to (audiences) — video, radio,
blahbity blah. Mainly radio. Once
(audiences) get that and keep
you on the air with it, they rebel
against it. … First, they’re brainwashed, then they realize they’re
brainwashed, because someone
shows them and pulls them into
The Matrix.
“It creates a yin and yang,” he
says, drawing a circle in the air. He
points to the bottom. “It’s tight. I’ll
always be on this side. … You can
put out as much music as you want.
That’s not oversaturation. Fluff is
oversaturation.”
(As he raps on “Fashionably
Late” from Pilot Talk 2: “editing
room, hours of clips, a man of many
hats in this new era, nurturing several smaller businesses under my
umbrella” (though almost under his
breath, he adds, “on the low low”).
“I can’t switch that up,” he says.
“People’s attention spans are
short. They’re used to seeing me. If
I fall back, someone else will gladly
just … I’m not having it.”
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23